- Found a coding video but cannot copy the code?
- You're a dyslexic or know a dyslexic fella that has trouble spelling and copying things properly?
- Need texts from meetings share screen?
- Found a meme and wanna reverse search its origin?
- Want to quickly translate foreign text from screenshots?
- Working with scanned documents or textbooks?
Snipping Lens gotchu!
Snipping Lens is a cross-platform application that automatically detects when you take screenshots and searches them using Google Lens for quick image lookup, and text extraction and translation.
demo.mp4
Current demo is for older versions.
Check Releases for the latest release and installation instructions.
Windows:
- Use Win+Shift+S, Print Screen, the configured hotkey, or left-click the tray icon.
- Any of those opens the Windows Snipping Tool; the capture it puts on your clipboard is detected and opened in Google Lens.
- Images copied from anywhere else are ignored, so ordinary copying never uploads anything.
Linux:
- Use the configured hotkey (default: Alt + Ctrl + \), or click "Snip" from the tray icon.
- On X11, Snipping Lens shows its own region selection overlay and captures the screen directly.
- On Wayland, the screenshot is taken through your desktop's XDG Desktop Portal, which shows its own selection UI.
- The captured screenshot is also copied to your clipboard.
- Left-click (Windows only): Takes a regional screenshot with the snipping tool.
- Right-click (and also left-click for Linux): Show context menu with options:
- Snip: Takes a screenshot (Linux only).
- Open App: Opens Snipping Lens main window.
- Exit: Close the application.
- Windows 10 or later.
- No screenshot tools needed. X11 is supported out of the box; on Wayland your desktop must provide the XDG Screenshot portal (GNOME, KDE and most modern desktops do). If it is missing, the log suggests the backend package to install for your desktop.
Screenshots are uploaded to Litterbox, a free and anonymous image hosting service, solely for the purpose of generating a URL that can be used with Google Lens. Images uploaded to Litterbox are not stored permanently, they automatically expire and are deleted after 1 hour. No user information is attached to the upload, and the application does not keep any record of your screenshots.
Simplicity, getting an image from user's clipboard and uploading it to a file hosting site is more straightforward than figuring out where the image is saved on the device for each operating system.
I'm sure you're worried about privacy, but you shouldn't be uploading confidential information to Google in the first place anyway.
As long as Litterbox returns the expected response (a direct image URL) and as long as the Google Lens endpoint https://lens.google.com/uploadbyurl?url=<uploaded_image_url> still exists and works, this program will continue to function as intended. If either service changes or is discontinued, the program's automatic search feature may no longer work.
Both setup_win.vbs (Windows) and setup_linux.sh (Linux) build the application from source using their own portable Python environment (MsPy 3.11). The application code lives in src/. If you want to use your own Python environment, adjust the interpreter path in bin/win/install.bat on Windows, or in setup_linux.sh on Linux.
If you like this project, please leave a star 🌟, and share it with your friends! Consider donating on PayPal to support development. _I will soon do Ko-Fi instead.
If you encounter any issue:
- Check the issues page if issue has been raised.
- Create a new issue if necessary and provide in-depth details of the issue including the relevant logs. The last lines are shown in the app window (tray > Open App); the full log is at
bin/win/logs/sniplens.logon Windows andbin/linux/logs/sniplens.logon Linux.
This project comes with no guarantee or warranty. You are responsible for whatever happens from using this project. This is a personal project and is in no way affiliated with Google nor Microsoft.